EARLY CAREER OF MR. NOBBS. 175 
February, 1822, finding he could hold out no 
longer, he attempted to escape to one of the 
Spanish ports in a small boat. But he was 
recognised, seized, and sent to Santiago, where, 
on the 21st, he was tried, and sentenced to 
death. The awful sentence was fulfilled. He 
was tied to the tail of a mule, dragged from 
prison, and then hanged in the palace-square. 
Mr. Nobbs having quitted the Chilian service, 
after many hardships and dangers, went to 
Naples in October, 1822. On his passage from 
that city to Messina in a Neapolitan vessel, she 
foundered off the Lipari Islands ; and, with the 
loss of everything, he reached Messina in one 
of the ship's boats. In May, 1823, he returned 
to London in the Crescent, commanded by 
William Pitt, a Navy Lieutenant ; and in the 
same year he sailed to Sierra Leone as chief 
mate of the Gambia. Of nineteen persons who 
went out in that vessel, none but the captain, 
Mr. Nobbs, and two coloured men, lived to 
return. In June, 1824, he again went to Sierra 
Leone, commander of the same ship, and was six 
weeks on shore ill with fever ; but it pleased 
God to restore him to health in time to return 
with his ship, the command of which he resigned 
on his arrival in England. 
The commander of a ship in which he had 
sailed, had expatiated so frequently on the 
happiness of the people at Pitcairn, that Mr. 
Nobbs seriously intended to go thither, if his 
life should be spared ; and he set out with this 
object in view, on the 12th November, 1825, 
in the Circassian, bound for Calcutta. He had 
M 
